Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Debunking Extremist Gun Arguments

Reactions to mass shootings in the United States have followed
a depressing pattern in recent years. People become outraged when a member of
Congress is shot in the head, or when twenty-nine people are killed in a Colorado
movie theater. But gun advocates always manage to silence the discussion.
"It would disrespect the victims to politicize this tragedy," they
say with mock sincerity, failing to note that not discussing gun-safety reforms
politicizes the tragedy to their advantage.

Within weeks, outrage morphs into fascination with celebrity
drug relapses or the next "storm of the century." Then gun-related
tragedy strikes again, and the pattern recycles.

Unfortunately, a small minority of gun fetishists has a
disproportionately loud voice in the current debate. These are well-paid
lobbyists for the gun-manufacturing industry (Wayne LaPierre), media figures
whose radicalism attracts far more attention than their talent (Ted Nugent,
Alex Jones), or everyday folks who have become convinced by fear-mongering
lobbyists and media extremists that imaginary roving bands of criminals are at
their doorstep (the sad souls on Facebook posting "Obama can take my gun
muzzle first!").

Many of these everyday folks mean well. They don't want to
see government micromanaging private citizens, and they certainly don't want to
see people killed in mass shootings. Unfortunately, they accept and repeat
seriously wrong-headed views on gun-related issues.

Ignoring extremists should be our first choice, but,
unfortunately, much of the media gun-safety discussion gets filtered through
these radical views. Responsible people have to meet these distractions and
distortions with clear, reality-based rebuttals.

So here goes--basic facts to answer extremist gun claims.

"Obama is coming for our guns. If Obama can't pass laws
to take away our guns, then he's going to use executive actions, just like a
dictator would."

"Obama started the strictest gun control in the country
when he ran Chicago, and that city has the worst crime anywhere."

Obama was a state senator who represented one part of
Chicago, but he was never involved in city government, let alone in charge. Blaming
gun control laws for violence in an urban area such as Chicago ignores
commonsense and critical thinking. City gun control laws didn't prevent the
flow of guns into Chicago from many surrounding areas with lax gun laws. The
strictest of Chicago's gun laws, a handgun ban, was overturned by the Supreme
Court in 2010, and gun violence has increased since then. Even so, Chicago
ranks as only the 79th most violent place to live in the United States.

"The term 'assault weapon' is just a scary name for a
regular rifle used for hunting or protection that happens to be painted black
and have some military features."

Legal
analysis finds that Supreme Court rulings show that military-style rifles
are "dangerous and unusual" weapons and are subject to stricter regulation
than basic hunting or self-protection firearms. The emphasis on the name of the
gun is irrelevant. Military-style automatic and semiautomatic
"assault" weapons are absolutely not the same as basic rifles.

"The previous assault weapons ban clearly didn't
work."

Responsible, nonpartisan fact-checkers have concluded that
the previous assault weapons ban showed, at worst, mixed
results. Although the law had far too many loopholes and wasn't in place
long enough to have full impact, there's plenty
of evidence that it helped hold down the number of mass shootings while not
depriving responsible gun owners of weapons for hunting or self-protection. In
basic numbers, there were 1.5 mass shooting per year during the 1994-2004
assault weapons ban. Since then, there have been 3.5 per year.

"Killers will find a way to kill people even if we ban
assault weapons or high-capacity magazines."

Bans on the kinds of weapons most
commonly used in mass shooting (semi-automatics, assault weapons, and
high-capacity magazines) won't stop all mass shootings. But bans on underage
drinking don't stop all underage drinking. The point of such bans is the same
as any other ban on dangerous items or activities: to make them more difficult,
less devastating, and less frequent.

"Hardly anyone is killed with assault weapons, so
there's no reason to have special laws to ban them."

This is one of the most common gun-related myths. Why anyone would embrace such an obviously flawed statement is a mystery. On its face, it's absurd. A person without a gun pointing a finger and saying "bang" isn't going to kill anyone. Having a gun makes a big difference in that equation.

Gun advocates have
told me that the "guns don't kill people" statement signifies the fact that guns are merely tools, and how
people use these tolls is what really matters. Okay, let's explore that line of thought.
Substitute any other tool into the equation too see if the overall idea makes
sense.

"Umbrellas don't block the rain. People block the rain."

"Bread Knives don't cut bread. People cut bread."

"Hammers don't pound nails. People pound nails."

Do any of these statements make any kind of sense? You could
use your hands to block the rain, but that wouldn't keep you
very dry. You could cut bread with your hands, but you'd make more crumbs than
neat slices. You could pound nails with your hands, but you'd probably end up
with a hospital visit and very little carpentry work done.

Just as umbrellas, bread knives, and hammers do their
intended tasks far better than our bare hands, so too do guns fulfill their
purposes better than bare hands. The reason groups or people have never been
strangled in large numbers or efficiently is that guns are the tool of choice
for such a horrible task.

This defeatist slogan is a very common comment whenever someone says that we need to have better gun-safety laws. But it clearly makes no sense. No law concerning any kind of criminal activity prevents all crime--yet we still have laws because we live in a civilization where laws identify our values. No one would say we shouldn't have strong laws against child molestation because molesters won't obey those laws anyway. Strong gun-safety laws can make it harder for criminals to get gun, which can save lives.

"Background checks are just a slippery-slope that leads
to gun registration, which is a slippery-slope to gun confiscation."

The "slippery-slope" argument is an example of a classic logical fallacy
that relies on sloppy thinking rather than a basis in fact. When gun advocates
actually use the term "slippery slope," they're showing deep
ignorance of the issues as well as poor critical thinking skills. Just because some
unlikely event could possibly happen, that doesn't mean that we should expect
it to happen. The United States has universal car registration, for example, and
that hasn't led to auto confiscations.

"The Newtown shooting was staged by the government to
drum up support for gun control. A video on the internet proves it."

This desperate and shameful claim echoes a similar one that
surfaced after the shootings in Aurora, Colorado, and it's just as full of
crap. The video in question is filled with inaccuracies,
innuendo, and easily
debunked misinformation. Even conspiracy-theorist Glenn Beck's The
Blaze website debunks the Newtown-staged theory.
When crap-master Glenn Beck thinks you're full of crap, that's a pretty damning
indictment. Of all the crazy theories advanced by these people, this one is the
worst. Anyone wondering where the term "gun nut" comes from doesn't
need to look further than claims about government staging shootings. They
should try making this claim to the parents who lost children in the Newtown
shooting or to those who lost loved ones in Aurora. More than anything else,
this terrible claim shows that they need to get
over their irrational fear, grow out of this insecure and paranoid phase, and
join the real world.

Of course, gun fetishists will dispute these points and dig
up questionable sources friendly to their cause as "evidence." But
common sense and the vast majority of reliable data contradict their extremist
talking points and supports gun-safety reform. Extremists will never see reason
as they try to block progress and wait out the "Connecticut effect."
But, as responsible citizens, we need to debunk the extremists and focus on
reality-based discussions to make our country safer.

6 comments:

Came here from the Jon Swift roundup. Post is bookmarked for future reference and btw I guarantee I will be "stealing" the graphic about the targets for use on my cable-access TV show Left Side of the Aisle.

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